298 HAR YARD LA W RE VIE W. the tenements are, to inform the others who are further away, I say that the assise will not be taken. A multo fortiori, those of one county cannot try a thing which is in another county." (Y. B. 48 Edw. III. 30, 17; s. c. Lib. Ass. 315, 5.) A statute of 1543 (35 H. VIII. c. 6, s. 3) required six hundredors. In 1585 (St. 27 Eliz. c. 6, s. 5) this was reduced, in personal actions, to two. "The most general rule," said Coke, early in the seven- teenth century, "is that every trial shall be out of that town, parish, or hamlet . . . within which the matter of fact assign- able is alleged, which is most certain and nearest thereunto." (Co. Lit. 125.) Much trouble was caused by going into this detail, and at last in 1705 (St. 4 Anne, c. 16, s. 6) it was enacted that in civil cases it should be enough to summon the jury from "the body of the county." In criminal cases the same result appears to have been worked out in practice. 1 Of the conceptions, as to this matter, of the earlier period, we may see a lively illustration in the passage which I place in a note, from Sir Francis Palgrave's " The Merchant and the Friar " (1837), in which, under the guise of a pleasant fiction, he pre- sents curious details of English life in the thirteenth century. 2 Long afterwards it was regarded as the right of the parties to "inform" the jury, after they were empanelled and before the trial. In 1427, we read in the St. 6 H. VI. c. 2, that in certain cases the viscounts must furnish the parties with the jury's names six days before the session, if they ask for it, since (it is recited as a grievance) defendants heretofore could not know who the jury were, " so as to inform them of their right and title before the day of the session," ( pur eux enformer de lour droit ett itles devaunt, etc.). This statute throws light upon the earlier general statute of 1 For details as to this, see Note 191, Co. Lit. 125. s These are being explained, so he fables, by an English friar, Roger Bacon, to an Italian merchant, Marco Polo, while showing the stranger over London. They are at Guildhall, and the trial of one of the alleged robbers of the king's treasury, in 1303, is beginning. "Sheriff, is your inquest in court?" said the mayor. "Yes, my Lord," replied the sheriff; " and I am happy to say it will be an excellent jury for the crown. I myself have picked and chosen every man on the panel. . . . There is not a man whom I have not examined carefully. . . . All the jurors are acquainted with [the prisoner]. ... I should ill have discharged my duty if I had allowed my bailiff to summon the jury at haphazard. . . . The least informed of them have taken great pains to go up and down in every hole and corner of Westminster, — they and their wives, — and to learn all they could hear concerning his past and present life and conversation. Never had any culprit a better chance of having a fair trial," etc.
